Several years ago, I did a nature program binge-watching session. Around the same time, I also got into Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s Cosmos series. And yes, there’s a relationship! I find patterns in all kinds of places.
Life is the relationship. Whether it’s known life here on planet Earth, or speculated life on, say, Jupiter’s moon Europa, life is extremely tenacious. It’s amazing to me that even when the environment seems quite hostile (volcanic vents at the bottom of the ocean or high deserts in South America), some form of life seems to inevitably figure out a way to survive.
The Fragility of Life—Not!
People worry about the fragility of life, usually when they are talking about individual species that seem to be threatened by human activity. And yes, an individual species (not to mention individuals within a species) can be very fragile indeed. But life as a whole is probably the most persistent self-replicating form of matter in the universe. In the Cosmos series, Tyson talked about several mass extinctions on the Earth, and one of them knocked out about 90 percent or or so of all species (not an asteroid hit, that one, but volcanism). And yet, and yet, each loss created opportunities for new life forms to develop.
Our Stewardship Imperative
This truth that life relies on a wholistic perspective of its survival does not mean that we should disregard the plight of pandas or spotted owls or not care about the balance of wildlife and human life on Earth. But chances are good that some form of carbon-based life exists outside of Earth, in the oceans of Europa, or even in the thick methane atmosphere of Saturn’s moon, Titan. And those are just two examples from our solar system. Who knows what life forms exist beyond that? So, we are not the be all and end all of keeping life going, on Earth or anywhere else.
One thing to keep in mind, though, is that life doesn’t have a particular attachment to any specific form, so if we humans want to continue on into future generations and also have access to both the utility and beauty created by the other life forms around us now, we will have to take the actions necessary to support the environment that supports us.
As always, our world is entirely up to us.